How does the Danish society react if a person wants to stay in the country but his motives are primarily aesthetic? The film For Aesthetic Reasons portrays the young Estonian art historian Andres Kurg who goes to Denmark and, at the director’s instigation, turns to all kinds of institutions with an attempt to seek permission to settle down in Denmark because he likes the environment.

»For purely aesthetic reasons«, as he claims.

He loves Danish post-war Modernism and would like to live in a house designed by one of its most prominent architects, Arne Jacobsen, surrounded by the designs of Bang&Oluffsen. While we are guided through some of the significant Modernist buildings by Kurg, we parallelly follow his attempts to get in touch with city officials and the proper authorities to find a solution. As Eastern Europe is still a no-man’s land, the migrant-aesthete from the Baltics tends to arouse suspicion on an ethical level. The only practical advice given, and the only remaining possibility, is what the Lutheran pastor suggests with an apologetic smile hiding his uneasiness, to marry a Danish girl, since families are not taken apart. The film which„bursts upon the stale and stuffy Estonian documentary film scene”(Andres Maimik) is influenced by the filmmaking experience of Dogma 95.